Coughing Teen Asks Dad to Take Her to Doctor, Diagnosis Turns Out to Be Fatal Cancer

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A teen from Centreville, Virginia, wasn’t feeling too well and suffered from a cough that wouldn’t seem to quit. She suspected she had contracted sinusitis. Tragically, she was wrong.

Shayla Mitchell, a 16-year-old, then asked her father, Tom Mitchell, whether he would take her to see a doctor.

“Hey Dad,” Shayla asked, as shared by Tom on Love What Matters. “I haven’t been feeling too well lately,” the teen continued, “do you think you could take me to the doctors? I think I might have a sinus infection or something.”

The single parent Tom replied: “Sure baby, I’ll pick you up after school tomorrow. We'll grab some dinner afterwards if you want.”

The father-daughter duo then drove to the doctor and Shayla was examined, but the doctor’s diagnosis left both father and daughter reeling. Shayla had stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“It turns out my daughter’s sinus infection was anything but,” Tom later shared. “It was actually a huge cancerous tumor that had been taking up two thirds of her little chest. It had caused one of her lungs to collapse.”

Tom and his daughter did have dinner that night, but it wasn’t the lighthearted family time they'd been looking forward to. “We mostly just pushed our food around our plates in a room on the pediatric oncology unit of Fairfax Hospital,” Tom wrote.

“We didn’t know it at the time, but we would wind up having our next 450 meals in that hospital,” he further added.

A heartbroken Tom then went to a jewelry store near the hospital and bought two matching silver feather bracelets as a gesture of solidarity. “I talked with her about the wind and about feathers,” he recalled, “and I talked with her about cancer. We promised each other that no matter what, we would be brave; together, we would get through this.”

Mitchell promised his daughter three things. He would wear his bracelet until she was cancer-free. In addition, he would stay with her every single night that she had to spend in hospital, and for as long as Shayla remained brave, so would he.

Their bravery was pushed to the limit.

Over the next two years, Shayla endured countless blood transfusions, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and even a terrifying cardiac arrest.

Through the immense ordeal, Tom never left his daughter’s side, every day striving to emulate her bravery. Caring for his daughter meant that Tom’s home-improvement company suffered, but a group called Growing Hope generously stepped in to help with his living costs. During that period of time, Shayla was Tom’s priority.

Tragically, after two years of fighting hard, Shayla’s body stopped responding to treatment. The exhausted teen then turned to her father. She asked him, “Am I still brave, Dad?”

“I placed my hands on her face,” Tom shared, “and looked deep into her eyes; my baby was tired and she had fought so bravely for so long [...] but as I looked into her eyes,” he continued, “I began to realize something.”

“This whole time she hadn’t been staying brave for herself, she had been staying brave for me!”

On Jan. 28, 2009, Shayla passed away. “I went into a dark abyss,” Tom told The Washington Post, and for six months, the bereaved father lost his way. That was until one day, when he stumbled upon a Mark Twain quote that changed his life.

“He said, ‘The two most important days in your life are the day you are born, and the day you discover why.’ And I knew after I read that quote that I was going to spend the rest of my life helping kids with cancer and their families.”

The now-52-year-old father started a non-profit, Stillbrave, to provide non-medical, moral, financial, and practical support to children with cancer and their families. To date, he and his supporters have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars through sponsored, long-distance trail races.